"Miracles are not contrary to nature,
but contrary to what we know about nature."-St. Augustine

Preview:

Black Swan

According to Lebanese philosopher and epistemologist and author of the similarly titled bestselling book, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan theory refers to the fact that improbable and rare events occur more than observer expectancy. To cite an excerpt from New York Times, he drives home the point about greater frequency of outlier by stating:

It is easy to see that life is the cumulative effect of a handful of significant shocks. It is not so hard to identify the role of Black Swans, from your armchair (or bar stool). Go through the following exercise. Look into your own existence. Count the significant events, the technological changes, and the inventions that have taken place in our environment since you were born and compare them to what was expected before their advent. How many of them came on a schedule? Look into your own personal life, to your choice of profession, say, or meeting your mate, your exile from your country of origin, the betrayals you faced, your sudden enrichment or impoverishment. How often did these things occur according to plan?

They are the feared West Indies. Or at least, once they were. The very name evokes the likes of Gordon Greenidge, Sir Vivian Richards, Sir Gary Sobers, Brian Charles Lara with some fearsome pace attacks comprising of Garner, Walsh, Ambrose. Alas! Gone are those days. Gone are those nostalgic 70s, the decade the team brought home the World Cup two times (1975,1979) and four years later Runners up.

But it's the year 2011. Time to snap back to reality. Some hopeful 15 youth now stand at the sandy ruins of the mighty Ozymandias. The very team which boasted Lara's undefeated 400* in Test is now seen having to compete with these 15 fellow, former having slipped to number 9.

Five days before the Tigers pits off against the West Indies, Bangladesh narrowly leads them by the skin of a teeth scoring 67 points while the latter scoring 66. Tinkering with the statistics highlights that -notwithstanding the Ireland match - Bangladesh leads the West Indies in team averages -albeit by a narrow margin- in all departments.

Speaking of narrow shave, Bangladesh already has a win under their belt which would be a tremendous moral boost. Revenge is secured, they have regained the confidence to defend low totals shall need arise and winning mentality got the squad in a rhythm.

The fact remains the 8th ranking of Bangladesh over West Indies is no trivial matter. Bangladesh LEADS West Indies in ranks and as we saw in overall average. Period. Thus they need to perform in the upcoming match with similar mindset wearing the ranking as a badge of honor. Despite the awe that the former mighty giant inspires, Bangladesh is superior, albeit by a fine margin, to the Windies in ink and paper. Would then a rational man then bet on Bangladesh after reading the stats and ranks? Of course not. It's the World Cup. Rankings and ratings, averages and strike rates all gets thrown out of the window. Emotions take over. Passions roll, experience matters....because no matter how strategically prepared a team comes in, when tens of thousands of odd crowd, jeers and cheers for opposition wickets and golden ducks in the match arena, it all boils down to an event as rare as a Black Swan.